Google Adsense Wired Collection

Do you ever wonder who’s helping you optimize your webpages? Who works hard to ensure your payments get to you on time? Who works with our product and engineering teams to deliver the products and features that you want?Over the next few weeks you’ll find out just that! We’re kicking off a video series where you’ll meet some of our AdSense team members. You can hear their stories, learn more about their role in AdSense, and listen to the tips they have to offer.In the first video, Debby, a member of the AdSense Optimization team talks about her favorite websites, what she likes about working for Google, and the Google products that she recommends every publisher try. Posted by Dia Muthana - Inside AdSense Team

Full Article

A few months ago, we created a Product Ideas page for AdSense, where you could tell us what product and feature updates you’d like to see. We received over 600 ideas from publishers all around the world, with ideas ranging from ad filtering options to increased transparency, and more detailed reporting to easier account management.Our product and engineering teams have been hard at work to bring you ideas from the wishlist. We still have more to do, but wanted to share some of the progress so far:You asked for…More transparency about how much you’re earning from AdSense.What we’ve delivered…The AdSense for content and AdSense for search revenue shares are now publicly shared.You asked for…The ability to block certain categories of ads, like religion and dating.What we’ve delivered…Category blocking (previously known as category filtering) is now available in 13 languages. You can filter up to 11 ad categories, including religion, dating, politics and weight loss.We’ve also been developing a new version of the AdSense interface. Although the interface is currently in beta, it addresses many of the requests we saw on the Product Ideas page. Take a look at the improvements that the new interface offers:You asked for…Make it easy to change addresses when we move from one location to a new one.What we’ve delivered…You can make requests to change the country of your payment address directly in the new AdSense interface. (Due to legal and system constraints, some country updates will still require you to create a new account.)You asked for…Automatic revenue tracking to quickly and easily compare performance of ads of different sizes and types.What we’ve delivered…The new AdSense interface offers Ad units, Ad sizes, and Ad types reports in the Performance Reports tab. These detailed reports cam help you understand which individual ad units, ad sizes, and ad types perform best on your site.You asked for…The ability to view data for a custom date range, similar to Google Analytics.What we’ve delivered…The new AdSense interface includes a date range selector just like Google Analytics. Plus, to see how your earnings have changed over time, we also have a feature that allows you to compare two date ranges. Simply select the date range you want to compare, check “Compare to other dates”, fill in the start date, and we’ll fill in the end date for you!You asked for…More time frames for analyzing metrics. Specifically we heard the wish to “select the same period of time and say group by week or month to see the trend.”What we’ve delivered…Reports by week and month, in addition to by day, are available in the Performance Reports page. Along with reports for “Entire account by day” you can choose from weeks and months. If you’d like the new beta interface enabled in your account, you can make a request.Thanks for all your ideas and votes. Your ideas and feedback help our teams determine where we should be spending our time, so keep them coming! Posted by Becky Feren - Product Specialist

Full Article

Fiction: Site maintenance periods and delays in my AdSense reports mean that data isn’t being recorded properly.Fact: Although there can sometimes be delays in the stats pipeline, all data is still tracked accurately.We call the process of tracking your clicks, impressions, and earnings the “stats pipeline.” The stats pipeline runs continuously, reviewing the logs of activity written by our ad serving system, aggregating them, and updating the storage system. So that we can generate these statistics quickly and reliably, without losing any information, the process of aggregating your statistics spans several data centers.Sometimes in rare cases, the process for aggregating stats can be delayed for several hours. This can happen for a few possible reasons:We sometimes make updates to our datacenter to make use of the latest technologies. However, these don’t affect how your clicks are tracked or how much you earn. Depending on the time it takes for the updates to complete, you may notice that stats are delayed by several hours.We have scheduled database down-times, generally on Saturday mornings (Pacific Time). Since the process of aggregating your statistics depends on database data, any such downtime also leads to delay in statistics. I’d recommend reading this Inside AdSense post for more information about these downtimes. On rare occasions, data centers can have unforeseen problems, causing unplanned delay in updating statistics.These downtimes only delay your statistics — they don’t impact the actual tracking of your statistics. We make sure that all events are processed exactly once, and we have implemented a number of internally and externally audited verification procedures to ensure that this is the case. Also, events in the aggregation pipeline are processed in a way that’s not specific to a particular publisher, so all of you should get your stats updates at the same time.When downtimes occur, we work to notify publishers in advance and as quickly as possible using this blog, the AdSense Help Forum, and our Known Issues page. We understand how important it is for you to have up-to-date statistics, and continue to work towards making sure that the delays are kept to a minimum.Posted by Dia Muthana - Inside AdSense Team

Full Article

The rapid pace of change in the advertising space can be dizzying. From new ad formats to new ad systems, from startups to mergers, the marketing industry is running at a million miles an hour, and it’s often daunting to keep up with it all. We know that staying informed takes a lot of effort, and it’s critical to make good decisions about how you spend your time and resources.That’s why we put together Google Ad News. Powered by Google News, Ad News is a simple but powerful way for anyone in the advertising industry to track current news coverage on relevant subjects such as display, search, mobile and even traditional media - all in one place. Subscribe to news feeds in the categories you care about most, or search to find coverage on topics related to your business, such as your niche industry or brand.We invite you to check it out and share it with your colleagues. Hopefully, you’ll find lots of relevant news that’ll help you spend less time scouring the web and more time building your business.Posted by Oliver Deighton - Business Marketing Manager

Full Article

This article is guest posted by James Rey.

When it comes to affiliate marketing there is a lot of room to make mistakes. We all hear about beginners coming into the internet marketing industry and blowing thousands on PPC, purchasing lame products and putting all of their eggs in one basket—leaving them flat broke and frustrated in the end. That being said what are the 5 deadly affiliate marketing mistakes you’re most likely making? Let’s take a look at some of the most common and “deadliest.”

1st Mistake: Picking the wrong niche.

Regardless of how you’re sending traffic, if you send the most targeted visitors possible to a sales page in the wrong niche you won’t generate sales. There are certain markets you should aim for and if you find yourself in a niche where the sales pages and products just aren’t converting, you may have yourself a dud. The good news is you can easily remedy this by picking a different niche that is full of desperate buyers. For example pick something broad and where people absolutely need a solution. Things like weight loss and hair loss related products convert very well for this exact reason.

2nd Mistake: Forgetting to track and monitor ROI.

If you’re running a campaign on Google Adwords or another PPC network you’ll want to make sure you’re tracking every last click, impression and sale. Knowing exactly how well your traffic is converting into sales is critical for staying profitable and not running yourself into a hole. For example if you send $50 worth of traffic to a sales page and lose half of it to one $25 sale, you’ll need to take this into consideration when tweaking your campaigns. Always track and monitor your business model for maximum performance.

3rd Mistake: Forgetting to build a list.

This is one of the most common problems that are seen time and time again. Regardless of the niche you’re in you should build a list so you can profit from it multiple times instead of just the initial sale you make. Having a mailing list is as simple as putting up code on your sales page or blog and capturing leads—it’s the simplest and one of the deadliest mistakes you can make.

4th Mistake: Poorly written and formatted sales copy.

If you’re selling things via a blog or traditional sales page it makes no difference—good sales copy is the only thing that matters. If you’ve only tested one sales copy you could be leaving money on the table so split testing various copies is the only way to know which will convert best and make you the most money.

5th Mistake: Ignoring valuable up-sell opportunities.

If you’ve got a sales process where you’re going straight to the checkout page then you’re definitely leaving money on the table—big money. Regardless of what you’re selling your customer there is always something else you can promote to make a bit more money. Always split test and carefully choose what you up-sell but make sure you implement this strategy as soon as possible since every sale could be bringing in double, triple or quadruple the profit.

James Rey is a consultant for Affilorama, an affiliate marketing training portal that offers free training, education, and affiliate marketing tools to affiliate marketers.

Full Article

We’re always focused on improving AdSense by bringing more advertisers to your sites, giving you more control over the ads that appear on your sites, and giving you more transparency into how much revenue you’re earning. Over the past year, much of our focus has been on attracting more display advertisers and display advertising spend to your sites. We’ve added new advertisers and introduced options that help these advertisers reach your sites. At the same time, advertisers have continued to run ads on YouTube and our own properties. To make our display media offerings clearer to advertisers and agencies so that we can continue to bring more display spend to your sites, we’re creating a new umbrella name for all these properties, the Google Display Network.The Google Display Network will comprise all of the sites where advertisers can buy ads through Google, including the over one million AdSense and DoubleClick Ad Exchange partners as well as YouTube and Google properties such as Google Finance, Gmail, Google Maps, and Blogger. As an AdSense publisher you’re already part of the Google Display Network. We’re not making any changes to how AdSense works, so no action is required on your part. If you use AdSense for search, your AdSense for search ad space won’t be part of the Google Display Network. Advertisers will continue to be able to purchase ads on your search results pages in the same way they always have.While this new name reflects our significant investment to bring more display advertising to your sites, we want to make sure you know that we are still committed to delivering relevant text ads. If you receive text ads on your sites today, rest assured that you will continue to do so. The Google Display Network offers all ad formats - text, image, rich media, and video ads - enabling advertisers to unleash their creativity and engage visitors on your websites in various ways. If you haven’t opted into receiving image ads, we encourage you to do so in order to benefit from the investments we’ve made.We’re working hard to offer the best display advertising solutions, and we look forward to continuing to introduce new features on the Google Display Network that help advertisers reach their goals and that help our AdSense publishers earn more revenue. Posted by Neal Mohan, Vice President of Product Management

Full Article

This article is guest posted by Xavier Lazos and Alex Jon Alavi.

If you’re a niche blogger like myself then you need to arm yourself with the right tools to make your online equity a success from the get go.

So everyone has been advising you to switch over to WordPress pronto because if Google would have a mistress … then WordPress would definitely be #1

So you’ve installed WordPress (the best decision you could ever make).

Now what?

Well.

The next step is to get the following WordPress plugins installed and activated to help you start on the right track straight off the bat.

I’ve listed the following 8 plugins I use (via priority as I see it), which you can also use as a checklist, the next time you set up your blog.

Plugin #1: Cbnet Ping Optimizer

Advantage: The last thing you want, is for your blog to be listed in the spammer twilight zone.
Well guess what? Every time you update your posts there’s a very good chance your (new)blog is already sending out pings WITHOUT you even knowing it and the last thing you want is all your SEO efforts going down the toilet drain right?

With the Cbnet Ping Optimizer plugin , you’ll be able to make sure your blog ONLY chatters with the rest of the blogosphere when YOU want it to.
After all. A well behaved blog is a good blog

Plugin #2: Broken Link Checker

Advantage: From an SEO perspective broken links on your blog is a BIG NO-NO and you can be dead sure that your blog will be penalized if your blog is crowded with broken links.
With Broken link checker, you will be notified of broken links via the WordPress dashboard (=cool cockpit view once you’ve logged in) and link nirvana will be a thing of the past.

Plugin #3: WordPress Database Backup

Advantage: Creates simple backups of your blog which is a must if you don’t want to lose all your hard work in the event of gremlin infestation or worse.

Plugin #4: WP Super Cache

Advantage: What do you think a Google bot would say if it (re)visited your website and found a slow churning machine? Most probably: “Slow blog. No time to index it. NEXT !!!”.
With this plugin you’ll be able to speed up the loading of your websites and the Google bots will thank you for it big time the next time they come round for a tea party at your blog.

Plugin #5: Google XML Sitemaps (Search engine Sitemaps)

Advantage: Creates a sitemap which is a layout of your website for smooth web crawlers. Make the bots’ lives easier and they will thank you for it. Big time.

Plugin #6: All in one SEO

Advantage: From a search engine perspective this is a must have and gives you the power of page titles, meta tags, keywords and descriptions. You’ll even be able to configure them on a post by post basis.

Plugin #7: All In One Webmaster

Advantage: As a webmaster there’s a good chance you’ve come across the Google webmaster tool. Yahoo has its equivalent the Yahoo site explorer and Bing the webmaster central.
This All In One Webmaster helps integrate the power of these tools from within your blog.

Plugin #8: Chennai Central

Advantage: There’s a good chance you are hosting several blogs on several domains either for yourself or family and the last thing you need is bandwidth problems.
Chances are you’ve come across sites with the following message : “User has exceed bandwidth for this month”.

Don’t let it happen to you. With Chennai central you’ll be able to control your bandwidth.

And that concludes my comprehensive 8 for WordPress plugins to install on your niche blog(s), so that the search engines will worship em.

Now get cracking

About the authors: Xavier Lazos and Alex Jon Alavi are brother in laws with a passion to create bonuses for cool information products, that teach beginners and intermediates the ropes to dominating competitive buying niches that make money online. Their latest bonus is Alex’s Crazy DPA Experiment – A Unique Traffic Ultimatum Bonus

Full Article

There are many marketplaces to purchase new and existing websites to add to your portfolio, and no marketplace is quite as popular as Flippa.com. Its a great place to search for valuable websites that you can add to your Adsense or affiliate marketing portfolio. However, there are a few things you need to watch out for, and without further ado, here they are.

Will You Actually Make What They Say?

Don’t be a newbie and get all dreamy about sites that make a good amount of monthly income. They might have the stats to backup PAST earnings, but how sure can you be that you will make that much? Be sure to read where the past traffic was coming from. If it came from private email newsletter blasts, you of course won’t have access to that. So my tip is to make sure that the majority of the traffic is coming from the results of SEO optimization and backlinks.

Duplicate Sites

Be on the lookout for duplicate sites by using tools like copyscape.com to check for duplicate content. Sometimes sellers can argue that the website is part of a PLR resale, and while that’s perfectly legal, I prefer not to buy those types of sites. I go for sites made by individuals who want to sell with the intentions of trying to flip it for the full value of the original site, or just letting the website go and they rather see it in better hands.

Know How The Site Will Be Transferred To You

Most likely, the website you are trying to purchase will be eventually transferred to your own hosting account, and that’s fine. But from my own past experience with Flippa, be sure that you will receive 100% of the content. There are two scenarios that I want to mention. The first is simply getting all the actual website content that you purchased. Sometimes by mistake, they might not include all the files, especially if it’s a big site your buying, and you might not even realize that those few pages were missing. The other scenario really bugged me. This was when I bought a Wordpress site that had all these fancy automated Plugins that required all these customized SQL databases and whatnot. The website that I bought was supposed to bring in fresh new content to my website every week, but never really worked. When I tried to get the seller to help me out, he never replied.

Additional Fees

More important than anything else I’ve mention (and should be the #1 thing to analyze when you find a seller) is to note the additional fees that you might incur if you buy a site. Each sale is unique because of the price, the different methods of payment, transferring fees by the seller (if you don’t know how to transfer it yourself), and so on.

Why Are They Selling It?

Before you do all your who what where when, you need to understand the why. Why is this seller willing to let go of their website? If it’s a completely new website that you’re buying for cheap, then it’s probably because you’re buying a jump start site that’s already made but now it’s your job to build traffic and maintain it. When it comes to the sites that are already making money, this question really comes into play. Why would someone be willing to let go of a comfortable and passive profit stream?

These five tips were meant to keep you alert of some things to look out for, not to push you away from buying these websites. Some websites on Flippa.com can be extremely valuable, so don’t get discouraged, and make sure to take note of these five tips before you get ready to buy.

This post guest blogged by Hemal Patel.

Discover the SECRETS I’ve Learned to go from zero a month to over $40,000 a month from blogging. Download Make Money Online with John Chow dot Com for FREE!

Full Article

Fiction: Google doesn’t support Electronic Funds Transfer in my country because they don’t like me!Fact: There are many factors we have to consider when launching EFT in new countries. In the meantime, please know that we’re always working towards expanding our payment options for publishers in all regions. Where we can provide in-country EFT depends on a number of factors. Whenever we launch Electronic Funds Transfer, our fastest payment method, in a new country, we hear a number of requests to launch it in even more countries. Don’t worry — we hear you! We’d like to launch EFT in as many countries as possible, but there are many things that we need to take into consideration before launching it, including legal and banking restrictions.We’re working constantly to overcome the hurdles to launch EFT in more countries, so thanks for being patient with us. We also know that you are the local experts — if there are payment methods that we don’t offer, but would work well for you otherwise, please leave us a comment! We’d love to have good suggestions from those who know best.Posted by Posted by Elizabeth Ferdon - AdSense Payments team

Full Article

Fiction: Targetable placements are difficult to set up and don’t do anything for my siteFact: It only takes seconds to convert your custom channels into targetable placements. This simple change can help increase your visibility to advertisers, and boost your revenue.Advertisers already take advantage of contextual targeting to have their ads appear next to your content. They also have the option to selectively target sites they know are relevant to their ads — when you’ve created targetable placements, advertisers can dig even deeper and find the most relevant sections of your site to place their ads.If you’re not familiar with channels, check out our Help Center for steps on how to change your custom channels into targetable placements.When writing the description of your channel, keep in mind things an advertiser might like to know. For example:What kind of content does this channel reflect?Is the channel on a specific section of your site (e.g. a forum section, blog section, etc.)?Are your ads above-the-fold (ATF)? In other words, can a user see them without needing to scroll down the page?Who is your target audience (gender, interests, income level, etc)? Your description may resemble something along the lines of: “This is a 300×250 ATF ad unit on the football section of a sports blog. My audience is 75% male, age 18-35, earning between $50,000-$80,000 per year.”To see the impact that placement targeting has on your site, check out this YouTube video on generating reports that break out your contextual and placement targeted revenue.You can further increase your visibility to advertisers by taking full advantage of DoubleClick AdPlanner, a media planning tool that allowed advertisers to find their audiences across the web. Take a look at our earlier blog post to find out more.With these small changes, you make it easier for advertisers to find your site, increase your placement targeting potential, and open the door to generating more revenue.Posted by Rishan Mohamed - Inside AdSense team

Full Article